


Countertransference

by averyfleur



Category: One Piece
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-02
Updated: 2017-08-02
Packaged: 2018-12-10 01:09:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11680848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/averyfleur/pseuds/averyfleur
Summary: Young surgeon Trafalgar Law deals with the first ever loss of a patient under his knife.





	Countertransference

"Ginger and lemon?" she asks, oozing with a grace that he did not anticipate. It makes his mouth dry. Her voice is the honey stirred into the tea--sweet and therapeutic--like the voice of his dead mother.

Dead. Like the man he just killed.

"Don't play dumb," he murmurs. "I know you know what happened."

With a click of the tempered glass door swinging in place, he flicks his gaze to the woman on the armchair in a corner as dark as her flowing hair, a slender silhouette caressed by the brooding warmth of the lamp that stood loyally by her side. The air is heavy--or did he bring it in?--and he swears the steam coming from the teapot is adding to the weight he has to fight in order to breathe. He swallows hard.

He doesn't remember guiding his feet toward the other armchair in the room, but he sinks into it and savours the comfort of releasing muscle tension into the cushions nestled behind him. The room feels like a familiar sanctuary--even though he'd never set foot here before--and maybe, just maybe, he was safe here, more than anywhere else. He bores his gaze into the ceiling.

"I fucked up."

"No one is made perfect," she says, softly. A teacup is offered to him with gentle fingertips.

A movement of his wrist, and suddenly there are echoes of angry tinkling upon impact and the warmth of hot tea bursting into the floor to join the remains of its vessel. He ignores the blood ebbing through the feathery scratches on his fingers. Does she still not get it? _He_ was made perfect. He was crafted, moulded, driven to perfection. And because he couldn't fucking live up to it, two lives had been lost.

One might have been his own.

* * *

Scalpel. Stitches. Antiseptic.

Blood.

The swift movements of hospital staff pressing rhythmically onto the patient's chest become a blur. He hears himself calling them to stop, that the monitor reading is flat and that they don't have to keep trying anymore. The breath against his surgical face mask is suffocating. How did the patient so suddenly deteriorate when it was supposed to be a simple procedure? What was he going to write in the report?

The answer hits him when the nurses turn the patient to the side to stick on defibrillator pads.

Wound.

He steps toward the patient, tracing a finger across the patient's clammy skin where he had found it. Left flank, five centimetres from the costovertebral angle.

Bullet.

"Did anyone see this?"

His piercing glare tears through the room, but his voice is shaking. Pale faces stare back. Guilt, horror and confusion, all dressed in white.

"So you're telling me," he continues, slowly folding back the patient's gown for full exposure, "that not one of you noticed this wound when you cut off his clothes and turned him over?"

"This is so bad," a nurse mumbles quietly, but his response cuts violently through her comment.

"Well, _no shit_! This is a fucking _bullet wound_ , Baby 5! He probably died because he was internally bleeding from right here, and for the last five minutes we've just been giving him fluid boluses and wondering why a small haemothorax would put him into shock!"

He couldn't have done it wrong. _No_. He had worked so hard, gotten to this level at such a young age, and no patient had ever died under his knife. His track record was impeccable.

But his own words boomerang back to split open his mind.

This is his fault. Making sure all wounds weren't overlooked, no matter how subtle, was his responsibility.

With a sharp exhale, he rips off his mask and hair net. His gloves are about to come off, too, but he winces at the sight of them. Bloodstains form a mosaic across his palms.

He fixes his eyes on the patient's monitor. Just a flicker of a waveform. A reading above zero. He could fix anything else, he swears, if only there was just an opportunity. Removing the gloves made no difference: the blood is there to stay.

He thinks it may be his own.

* * *

She doesn't flinch. She looks at him with a gaze that almost challenged him to show her something new. He considers picking up the shards from the floor, but not because he wanted to clean up the mess he had made, because he'd already made enough of that.

"Maybe I shouldn't have offered tea."

"Maybe you've been doing this for so long that these consultations don't bear meaning to you anymore," he retorts, standing up from his seat. "Doctors burn out. I get it. But have you ever seen a life slip away right before your eyes?"

"Some lives have been lost, but I know I did the best I could."

Yeah? Well _he_ didn't do the best he could. He considers telling her that maybe her complacency should be shaken every once in a while, and that he would be more than willing to be the catalyst for it--but he knows better. He paces towards the door and swings it open, turning around at the last second to face her at the sound of his name.

"Law--"

"Thank you for your time."

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading til the end (*ﾟ▽ﾟ*) My original intention was to have a slightly longer plot line, but I realised this could be a stand alone chapter as well! Do let me know what you think so I can incorporate it into future posts!
> 
> \- Avery


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